The first rule of TV remakes is this: Don’t make TV remakes. Classics should stay just that. But does anyone ever listen? No, no they don’t.

There are a few rare occasions where taking a film to television has worked – take last year’s live televised version of Grease starring Vanessa Hudgens and Julianne Hough, for example. But last night’s take on the Patrick Swayze favourite Dirty Dancing, went down like a lead balloon – or should we say, a very heavy watermelon.

It had all the trappings of a new classic in the making: an all-star cast including Nicole Scherzinger, Debra Messing and Abigail Breslin, all the old hits, and even the iconic lift between Baby and Johnny.

The story follows Breslin as Baby and newcomer Colt Prattes as Johnny as they fall in love at a Catskills resort where she is vacationing with her family. The routines were choreographed by the man responsible for the moves in the critically acclaimed Broadway musical Hamilton, but alas even the big dance finale wasn’t enough to get people rooting for these two lovebirds.

Debra Messing plays Baby’s mother, Marjorie Housman (Picture: ABC)

In an interview with Messing, who plays Baby’s mother Marjorie Houseman, she promised that this iteration of the eighties classic would be bigger and better, ‘so there is a lot more music and there is a lot more dancing.’

But unfortunately the ABC remake fell flat with viewers, who said they needed a helpline after watching the new version after it was broadcast on Channel 5.

Perhaps the best thing to come out of the remake is the plethora of memes, born from the viewers’ hatred of their precious eighties classic being meddled with.

Twitter user @HelenJRJG said ‘The Dirty Dancing remake hurts. Even the watermelon has been downgraded #dirtydancing’, whilst @okiepie123 lamented, ‘Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse. They sing #dirtydancing’.

Abigail Breslin recently revealed that she cried after recreating the infamous lift with dance partner Prattes.

‘I have this picture on my phone of when we finally did the lift, like me just sobbing into his arm,’ Breslin told E! Online. ‘It was the most incredible thing. It was really overwhelming.’ People have, however, been quick to compare the lift of Breslin and the actress who portrayed the original Baby, Jennifer Grey.